XLB: A High Performance Layer-7 Load Balancer for Microservices using eBPF-based In-kernel Interposition

TL;DR

XLB introduces an in-kernel, eBPF-based L7 load balancer for microservices that significantly improves throughput and latency by eliminating overheads associated with traditional load balancer architectures.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel in-kernel load balancer architecture using eBPF, providing higher performance and scalability for microservices compared to existing solutions.

Findings

Up to 1.5x higher throughput than Istio and Cilium

60% lower end-to-end latency

Efficient socket layer redirection and nested eBPF maps

Abstract

L7 load balancers are a fundamental building block in microservices as they enable fine-grained traffic distribution. Compared to monolithic applications, microservices demand higher performance and stricter isolation from load balancers. This is due to the increased number of instances, longer service chains, and the necessity for co-location with services on the same host. Traditional sidecar-based load balancers are ill-equipped to meet these demands, often resulting in significant performance degradation. In this work, we present XLB, a novel architecture that reshapes L7 load balancers as in-kernel interposition operating on the socket layer. We leverage eBPF to implement the core load balancing logic in the kernel, and address the connection management and state maintenance challenges through novel socket layer redirection and nested eBPF maps designs. XLB eliminates the extra overhead of scheduling, communication, and data movement, resulting in a more lightweight, scalable, and efficient L7 load balancer architecture. Compared to the widely used microservices load balancers (Istio and Cilium), over 50 microservice instances, XLB achieves up to 1.5x higher throughput and 60% lower end-to-end latency.